Catching Up

On Friday we drove from drove from Calgary to Medicine Hat, played a show, left the next morning for Edmonton, which took us back through Calgary and took all day, played a show there until 1:30 am, and then left for Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. We arrived at 7am and played at the local church at 9am and again at 11am, and again at 7pm. That was hectic. But some good very good times have been had.

Of note was the show we played on thursday at a beach house, a swanky type of place in a swanky neighbourhood in Calgary. It was a nice warm day. We took some pedal boats out to the middle of the lake and I decided to swim back, not remembering that a week previous the ground in Calgary was actually covered in snow. It was so cold that I had trouble making it back. Not because it was that far, but because the cold made it so hard to breathe. Even floating on my back I was having trouble. By the end I was a big wet noodle. And my body refused to warm up for the rest of the night.

The bar we played at in Medicine Hat was previously a gay bar and apparently a strip club. It looked the part. Sleazy, but in a very hip way. I liked it. We didn't have a place to stay that night but a guy who played before us said we could stay with him at his parents' place. His dad was a doctor, so we said yes. On the way to Edmonton the next day we stopped at a rest stop and played with the local gophers for quite a while. I tried to take one out with a frisbee, but they're speedy little fellas. I also almost got one to eat out of my hand. But not quite. We tried to leave but our van was having no part of that. It was refusing to start, and then when it finally did it would either stall or backfire loudly. Eventually it decided to give in, and we made it to Edmonton safely.

In Edmonton we had supper at a place called Big Boy Pizza or something like that. We were told it was a buck-a-slice place, and it looked sketchy and affordable on the outside, but it turned into a fancy sit-down place with Italian menus once you got inside. Turns out the words "Big Boy Pizza" sound and look a whole lot more classy in Italian.

Then we played a secret show at Castle Awesome. Let me tell you about Castle Awesome. Castle Awesome has a climbing wall. Castle Awesome has a pool. Castle Awesome is not exactly what it sounds like. It's on a very ordinary street in Edmonton, and it's a very ordinary, very messy bungalow that two scene guys live in. The pool cost $60 at Walmart. The climbing wall is 10 feet tall. But they have shows there all the time, and Castle Awesome is still pretty awesome.

We played a cool show in the basement that was crammed with people and EXTREMELY hot. It was probably the best show we'll play on tour. The energy in there was incredible, the crowd was crammed right into our faces, and they loved us. And there's something about leaving a show in a t-shirt drenched with sweat that makes everything feel all right. Even if you then have to drive through the night and play worship music you haven't ever practised the next morning. We watched Big Fish in the van and then I drove the rest of the way. Our improvised worship songs were not very good, especially since Jer, who was leading most of them, didn't really know some of them. We're not a worship band, and we were really tired. None of us was really happy with our show that night either, especially compared to the energy and sweat of the night before. The ambience in a small town church sanctuary isn't quite the same as the basement of Castle Awesome, and we had no idea if anybody there liked us at all, especially since they were either over the hill, or in junior high and probably into screamo and hip-hop. But we sold 28 CDs, so they obviously did.

Today we played Frisbee in a field well stocked with mosquitos. It's been a while since i've experienced mosquitos but i figured they wouldn't bug me too much since i'm from Winnipeg. The weird thing is though, they did. Turns out mosquitos aren't very fun to be around. Especially not in the thick variety, when you can slap yourself and hit more than one, or swing your arms randomly and hit several.